Eight years in prison for MBWay crimes

The Leiria Court sentenced a man this Monday to a single sentence of eight years in prison for various crimes through MBWay. Another woman was sentenced to a single sentence of four years and six months in prison, suspended for the same period, but subject to probation.

The defendant, aged 30 and serving a sentence in a prison in Leiria, was found guilty of 30 crimes of qualified fraud (one co-authored), 30 of illegitimate access (one co-authored) and one of money laundering. The defendant, aged 36, was convicted of nine crimes of qualified fraud (one co-authored), 11 of illegitimate access (one co-authored) and one crime of money laundering.

The man was granted a one-year pardon in the single sentence (under the law that establishes pardon of sentences and amnesty for infractions within the scope of World Youth Day), meaning he has to serve seven years in prison. In the case of women, amnesty does not apply. The pardon is granted under the condition of “not committing an intentional infraction in the subsequent year” by September 1, 2023 and paying the compensation determined by the collective court

The panel of judges considered it proven that the defendants, in 2019, “decided, sometimes alone, sometimes together”, following a “previous plan they outlined”, to appropriate money “through access to the bank accounts of third parties”, obtaining “economic advantages for themselves or for third parties who intended to benefit, using” the fraudulent use of the MB Way application.

To achieve this purpose, the defendants, who became lovers and did not have any profession or paid legal activity at the time, “taking advantage of the vulnerabilities of banking computer systems, specifically the MB Way application, and the lack of knowledge about the functioning” of this on the part of many citizens, they decided to contact several people, mostly through social networks.

After gaining some confidence, they made them falsely believe in information/loan requests for low-value amounts of money and convinced them to lend them the requested amounts, through MB Way.

The defendants purposely gave these people wrong instructions, in order to gain access and control over their bank accounts or bank accounts to which they had access, thereby managing to carry out various operations on these accounts, such as payments, withdrawals and transfers.